Anna Karenina! Finally!

If you’re a daily reader, you know I’ve been asking about this often, especially the last few weeks as many of the expected Best Picture contenders are rolling out their campaigns. Here, finally, is the first trailer for Joe Wright’s Anna Karenina, screenplay by Tom Stoppard, starring Keira Knightley, Jude Law, Aaron Johnson, Kelly Macdonald, and so many more...

It’s gorgeous, right? Gorgeous...but restrained too. There’s a skill to that and it’s a skill that Baz Luhrmann willfully ignores, which is why this trailer is so much better than The Great Gatsby’s, now amateurish in comparison. Jude Law in particular stands out to me here. He’s lowered his voice as Karenin. I like it. It suits it. And that glimpse of Johnson’s Vronsky falling apart there - so quick you might have to view a second time - that looked very promising to me too. But I have to say, even though she’s my girl these days, I’m not yet sold on Keira. Not sure why exactly but it might be I’m finding it difficult to distinguish all her period piece roles; they’re starting to blur together. And two and a half minutes just isn’t enough to get enough of the flavour here of how this time is different from The Duchess and Dangerous Method etc. Is that fair? Doesn’t mean I don’t want to see it because I do, so much, very much. She just might have to work harder than the rest. It is terribly unfair, isn’t it? And kind of appropriate, considering.